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Some enquiry must be made into what is known as the complete
transfusion of material substances.
Is it possible that fluid be blended with fluid in such a way
that each penetrate the other through and through? or- a
difference of no importance if any such penetration occurs- that
one of them pass completely through the other?
Those that admit only contact need not detain us. They are
dealing with mixture, not with the coalescence which makes the
total a thing of like parts, each minutest particle being
composed of all the combined elements.
But there are those who, admitting coalescence, confine it to the
qualities: to them the material substances of two bodies are in
contact merely, but in this contact of the matter they find
footing for the qualities of each.
Their view is plausible because it rejects the notion of total
admixture and because it recognizes that the masses of the mixing
bodies must be whittled away if there is to be mixture without
any gap, if, that is to say, each substance must be divided
within itself through and through for complete interpenetration
with the other. Their theory is confirmed by the cases in which
two mixed substances occupy a greater space than either singly,
especially a space equal to the conjoined extent of each: for, as
they point out, in an absolute interpenetration the infusion of
the one into the other would leave the occupied space exactly
what it was before and, where the space occupied is not increased
by the juxtaposition, they explain that some expulsion of air has
made room for the incoming substance. They ask further, how a
minor quantity of one substance can be spread out so as to
interpenetrate a major quantity of another. In fact they have a
multitude of arguments.
Those, on the other hand, that accept "complete transfusion,"
might object that it does not require the reduction of the mixed
things to fragments, a certain cleavage being sufficient: thus,
for instance, sweat does not split up the body or even pierce
holes in it. And if it is answered that this may well be a
special decree of Nature to allow of the sweat exuding, there is
the case of those manufactured articles, slender but without
puncture, in which we can see a liquid wetting them through and
through so that it runs down from the upper to the under surface.
How can this fact be explained, since both the liquid and the
solid are bodily substances? Interpenetration without
disintegration is difficult to conceive, and if there is such
mutual disintegration the two must obviously destroy each other.
When they urge that often there is a mixing without augmentation
their adversaries can counter at once with the exit of air.
When there is an increase in the space occupied, nothing refutes
the explanation- however unsatisfying- that this is a necessary
consequence of two bodies bringing to a common stock their
magnitude equally with their other attributes: size is as
permanent as any other property; and, exactly as from the
blending of qualities there results a new form of thing, the
combination of the two, so we find a new magnitude; the blending
gives us a magnitude representing each of the two. But at this
point the others will answer, "If you mean that substance lies
side by side with substance and mass with mass, each carrying its
quantum of magnitude, you are at one with us: if there were
complete transfusion, one substance sinking its original
magnitude in the other, we would have no longer the case of two
lines joined end to end by their terminal points and thus
producing an increased extension; we would have line superimposed
upon line with, therefore, no increase."
But a lesser quantity permeates the entire extent of a larger;
the smallest is sunk in the greatest; transfusion is exhibited
unmistakably. In certain cases it is possible to pretend that
there is no total penetration but there are manifest examples
leaving no room for the pretence. In what they say of the
spreading out of masses they cannot be thought very plausible;
the extension would have to be considerable indeed in the case of
a very small quantity [to be in true mixture with a very large
mass]; for they do not suggest any such extension by change as
that of water into air.
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